Richmal Crompton

How Richmal Crompton delighted millions with her Just William books

As fans this year mark the 100th anniversary of Crompton's first book, the story of Just William's impact on the literary world and society has been told in a BBC radio documentary that airs on Sunday.

Radio Times review

Martin Jarvis pulls off another one-man, multi-voiced spectacular at Cheltenham, bringing life to Richmal Crompton's naughtiest of schoolboys, William. He's voiced these short stories many times before, but to perform one faultlessly in front of a live audience is a true reflection of his thespian skills.

It is a recipe for both disaster and hilarity when William and his gang, the Outlaws, are asked to look after a baby. No sooner do they have one infant under their charge than they end up with a further two under their "care". The sequence at a baby show is sublime. When asked by the organiser what illnesses the "triplets" have had, William replies "lumbago and gout"!

William Brown is confused. Some literary expert has been lecturing class 3A about a writer called Shakespeare and a cove called Bacon who stole all his work and sometimes went by the name of Ham. Or Eggs.

Martin Jarvis delivers a live performance of one of Richmal Crompton's finest outings for William, which ends in him delivering his own version of the "To be or not to be" soliloquy from Hamlet. So what if the words are not in the right order or, indeed, actual words?

It's William's moment in the spotlight and one of the funniest things on the radio this fortnight.

The importance of seizing life's windows of opportunity was not lost on the team behind the Beeb's other post-Christmas winner [aside from Toast], Just William. Not that it would have taken a casting director of genius to realise that Daniel Roche - the 11-year-old actor who played Ben in Outnumbered - was born to play William Brown, Richmal Crompton's schoolboy anti-hero.

With his natural curls and even more natural scowl, Roche brought Brown to life as no other child actor has before. But what really elevated Simon (Men Behaving Badly) Nye's adaptation were the moments inbetween young William's adventures and the painstaking attention to detail of its early 1950s period setting.

With an adult cast including Rebecca Front and Daniel Ryan as the long-suffering senior Browns, and Warren Clarke and Caroline Quentin as the nouveau riche Botts, Nye's four episodes - perhaps taking inspiration from The Simpsons - fully appreciated that there was room here for all the characters to manoeuvre. There were storylines involving William's sister Ethel, subplots based around the staff at William's school, visits from members of the extended Brown family and, of course, the sthpectacularly sthpoilt Violet Elizabeth.

The sharpness of the script was evident from episode one, in which William's brother Robert, newly obsessed with Marlon Brando in The Wild Ones, had this exchange with his mother: Robert [mumbling]: "I need to go somewhere." Mrs Brown [not looking up]: "If you're passing the shop could you buy a loaf of bread?" Robert: "No, I need to escape. I'm going to join a biker gang." Mrs Brown: "Righto. Maybe you should borrow Mr Nuttley's motorbike and see if you like it first."

Who of us brought up in the stifling atmosphere of the suburbs will not have had a similar early life exchange, in which a burning passion is reduced, with a seen-it-all-sigh, to the status of hobby?

Thus, while Toast and Just William were both unashamedly nostalgic, both also carried off the crucial trick of ringing true to a 21st-century audience. Good writing, fine acting and a past (unlike the foreign country of Upstairs, Downstairs) that we can all remember and relate to.

It's not too much to ask for is it? And especially at a time of year when, for many of us, the televison screen is the window of opportunity in the corner of all of our living-rooms.

Outnumbered's bloodthirsty Ben is a William for our times, so the casting of actor Daniel Roche, so brilliant as the violence-obsessed middle child in the hit BBC1 sitcom, is perfect. The sublime Martin Jarvis, who is William to so many of us, thanks to his peerless readings of Richmal Crompton's tales on Radio 4, narrates a series of four stories (daily until New Year's Eve). Here William and the Outlaws first encounter insufferable Violet Elizabeth Bott, the be-ribboned, lisping brat who manipulates everyone with her threats to "thcweam and thcweam and thcweam until I'm thick". Warren Clarke and, particularly, Caroline Quentin have a whale of a time as Violet Elizabeth's vulgar, nouveau riche parents (dad is the Bott's Digestive Sauce magnate), while Rebecca Front and Daniel Ryan are sweetly forbearing as William's mum and dad. It's aimed at kids, but adults will have fun, too, if only as they look back fondly on a world where children could play outside for hours on end and the sun always seemed to shine.

William Brown truly is the boy who never grew up. Created by writer Richmal Crompton in 1922, William has remained 11 years old ever since, infuriating his teachers, embarrassing his mother, and forever trying to shake off the attentions of his spoilt brat of a neighbour, Violet Elizabeth Bott. His antics have already been adapted for television several times over.

This new treatment, written by Men Behaving Badly creator Simon Nye, opts to set the Just William stories in the Fifties - just far back enough to feel like a magical distant world to today's technology-obsessed children. William is played with gusto by Outnumbered's Daniel Roche, but it's the casting of the adults that brings the whole thing to life, especially Rebecca Front (The Thick of It) as William's permanently flustered mother, and Warren Clarke in the pantomime villain role as local condiment magnate Mr Bott (yes, his product really is called Bott Sauce). In this first episode of four to be screened over consecutive lunchtimes, the Bott family has just moved house, with Mr Bott taking a dim view of William's gang using his woods as a base. So William plots his revenge...

Video: Just William's adventures come to television

An all-star cast is due to bring the exploits of mischievous schoolboy Just William to life this Christmas.

The BBC adaptation has been filmed nearly a century after the publication of the William books by author Richmal Crompton.

The BBC's Emma Jones went behind-the-scenes.